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IRE Radio Podcast | The Fairbanks Four

For nearly 15 years, a journalism professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks has been investigating the case of the Fairbanks Four, a group of men convicted in the 1997 beating death of a teenager. And he hasn’t been working alone. Each year, students in Brian O’Donoghue’s investigative reporting class picked up the case. Their…

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IRE Radio Podcast | Life and Death in Lowell

Approximately 2,700 women are serving time at Lowell Correctional Institution, the nation’s largest women’s prison. On this episode, Miami Herald reporter Julie Brown discusses her year-long investigation into Lowell. Documents, interviews and a Facebook page for former inmates helped her expose a world of sexual extortion, abuse and corruption inside the Florida prison. As always,…

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IRE Radio Podcast | BONUS: The Sounds of NICAR16

There are certain pieces of advice you hear over and over again at our annual computer-assisted reporting conference: Get out there, take risks and experiment. So at our recent conference in Denver, we sent University of Missouri journalism student Jack Howard to do just that. On this bonus episode, you’ll hear his five-minute experiment: capturing…

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How to turn data into compelling audio and video

By Maggie Angst For journalists working with audio or video, it can sometimes be challenging to find the best way to display data in story. Joe Wertz, an environment and energy reporter for StateImpact Oklahoma, emphasized that although we really want a character to tell a story, sometimes the data can be the character. For…

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IRE Radio Podcast | Chicago’s Secret Cash Machine

Chicago drivers have forked over more than $600 million for traffic fines captured by red light cameras. But an investigation by the Chicago Tribune found that the largest robotic camera system in the country ­hasn’t done much to make the streets safer. Instead, city officials have used Chicago drivers like a network of cash machines. Reporter…

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IRE Radio Podcast | America’s Exploited Guest Workers

All across America, you can find foreign guest workers peeling crawfish, setting up carnival rides and trimming trees. But the visa program that legally brings them here is rife with problems. On this episode, Ken Bensinger and Jessica Garrison take us through their BuzzFeed News investigation into H-2 visas, a program that condemns thousands of…

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IRE Radio Podcast | The Journalists and the Death Squad

On this episode, reporter A.C. Thompson discusses his investigation into the deaths of five Vietnamese-American journalists between 1981 and 1990. Officials seemed to think that an anti-Communist group called the Front had been behind the slayings, but law enforcement agencies never charged anyone and the cases went cold. Thompson reopened the investigation for ProPublica and…

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Tips for investigating child and family issues

Domestic violence, foster care and mental illness are important issues for journalists to cover. But anytime you’re dealing with families and children, there are ethical decisions to consider. We pulled some of our favorite tips and insights from a panel at the 2015 IRE Conference. IRE members can listen to the entire panel online.  …

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IRE Radio Podcast | BONUS: Spotlight

If you attended an IRE Conference in the early 2000s, the plot of the movie “Spotlight” might have sounded familiar. That’s because the Hollywood depiction of the Boston Globe’s investigation into the clergy sex abuse scandal stayed surprisingly true to the real behind-the-scenes story. How do we know? A few of the journalists depicted in…

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